This is the blurb from the Banzai! news page, which doesn't mention a streaming game. Where have you heard about the streaming game? (I only ask because your post is the second one pointing to their being a game played on the stream.)

That headdress was rocking.

It just occurred to me (unless I'm reading the card wrong) that Isawa Masahiro can burninate characters in political conflicts, too. As cool as that is, it seems like it should probably come with an honor loss... (Also, couldn't they have just named him Isawa Tsuke?)

As much as I think Shadowlands as a faction is fine, having it merely as a trait also has a number of interesting story interactions. Seeing someone like Isawa Tadaka, tainted out of hubris perhaps but also a desire to save the Empire, put into a Shadowlands deck makes the taint seem very black and white; evil or good. Not everyone who is tainted should be a willing pawn of Jigoku. Leaving Shadowlands as a trait and not a faction lets it also manifest as a disease, burden, or punishment for an otherwise good character to endure, which I think makes for some good storytelling. What is the curse of the taint without the hope of redemption?

Have you (or anyone else) bought from Covenant in the past? How are they? Buying from a FLGS is not an option for me, so I'm trying to find the best online alternative. Covenant seems to be gamer-oriented and while the international shipping isn't cheap it's about what I expect. However Amazon US has really good international shipping rates ...

Also, this: "This concludes our overview of the general rules of Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game, but be sure to check out the Fantasy Flight Games Facebook page this Friday at 11 a.m. CST for our first Facebook Live Stream! Tweet your Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game questions to @FFGames on Twitter with the hashtag "#L5Rlive" to have them answered by Story Lead Katrina Ostrander and Designers Brad Andres and Nate French live on air!" Takeaways: 1) General rule stuff is finished. 2) No mention of "see us next week," implying there is no date set for the next article yet 3) More Q&A on Friday!

I am disappointed we didn't get to see Isawa Masahiro burninate an attacking personality. Pacifism and occasional burnination; these are the things I crave from my Phoenix. All joking aside, we did get to see our first spell, which works like an O5R kiho. Of course, this doesn't necessarily rule out attachment spell "scrolls;" I wonder if they have attachments with the Spell keyword as well. Also, interesting to note that this spell only requires you to control a shugenja. Of course we don't know if this is the norm, but I thought it curious that 1) the action is performed by the player, not by the character card and 2) the shugenja wasn't required to be at the conflict. Will this hold true if a spell requires bowing? I guess we'll have to wait for more previews.

You speak the truth.

So much this. They tried the same sort of things with elemental keywords back in the day and the conditionals on all the abilities and bonuses just made a lot of Phoenix personalities basically useless in most situations. I like the elemental interaction themes in theory, but in practice I would rather have personalities that are good at all times.

I'm patiently waiting to find out if spells and magic are going to be good this time around. Not holding my breath, but who knows. Thematically, I like this pacifism theme for the Phoenix, but we'll have to wait and see how or if that translates to a victory condition.

Do they usually do pre-orders for their base game releases?

So I was playing FFG's "Blood Bowl: Team Manager" just the other day with a friend, and I realized that basically the way it handles characters is similar to how new L5R does. That is to say, each round you and the opponent draw six personalities and take turns playing them at different matches on the board. After each round you get rewards for the matches you win, all the characters are discarded, and you draw a new hand of six characters and begin the next round. It seemed functionally somewhat similar to these "fading" personalities from L5R (though the systems on the whole still are still quite different.) It actually made me much less apprehensive about the new Fate system for personalities. Resetting the board made it easy for me to get back into the game even after a bad round or two, and it keeps you feeling like you have a chance up until the very end. It also keeps you on your toes; you can't get complacent after a good turn or two. But anyway, the whole time I was playing Blood Bowl I was thinking "Wait, FFG has done this fading thing before..."

I wonder if they are leaving open the possibility of "unbreaking" provinces in the future.

Something else I just noticed, but does the graphic about breaking provinces imply that you bow a province to show that it's broken?

So I'm guessing the Wandering Ronin is a conflict card based solely on the fact that he is wandering, but is there any way of determining dynasty vs. conflict based on the front side of the card (other than influence appearing on clan aligned cards) ? Edit: I guessed wrong.

Clearly, they are re-using art assets. Which I'm not saying is a bad thing in and of itself, except it might be confusing if people with more obvious clan-themed clothing start changing clans.

Rokuganimation?

It's over 9000, guys. #memesover10yearsold

I guess there hasn't been a good enough spoil of a neutral card to get a neutral frame yet?

You never know, they might want the insight of someone who does their own game design and such for play-testing. Can't hurt to ask. But as to your point, I totally agree. In the end the narrative applied to die rolls is going to depend on each group and how they approach the game. For some groups the FFG custom dice might help facilitate that, but for my group it didn't really aid to the narrative enough to warrant buying all the custom dice (and official dice-rolling apps, for that matter.) And my group had a number of first time role players who were having a hard enough time wrapping their head around the rules in general that all the symbols made everything even more confusing. I'm sure FFG will make a great product and I'll probably even consider buying it, but I would just rather not have to buy a bunch of new dice to play it.

I have to agree. In my experience with the SW system, the threats and advantages often end up just being modifier dice added to other rolls or what-have-you. The "narrative strength" of the die results is entirely up to the play style of the group. You could just as easily do something similar with "barely meet the TN" or "barely failed to meet the TN," but not have to buy a set of dice you won't be able to use with any other game. Also, the fact that triumphs (or whatever the "super success" was called) and despairs didn't cancel out made for some problematic story telling. I succeeded but also didn't? I also felt it ended up being a disappointment for the players when they got an otherwise great roll with a despair. Despite succeeding by a large margin, Something Bad happened anyway. Situations like that detracted from the fun of the game at times, I felt.

A lot of real world dynasties have tied themselves to religious and fantastical figures to try and gain legitimacy. The line of emperors in Japan still obstensibly traces its lineage to Amaterasu, if I recall correctly. Of course, Amaterasu doesn't make appearances or use her mystical powers to influence things in the real world, which I think was more to the point you were making.

Indeed, but that isn't what I was asking. I was asking why would it be any more or less likely for conflict character card titles to include family names (since I assume cards retain their clan alignments anyway no matter what deck they are in.)

If FFG doesn't include this card they have let us all down.?

Right you are. Then there would also be a Wikipedia talk page about whether the correct English version of the name is "Kuromori Forest" or "Kuro Forest." (See the "Arakawa River / Ara River" talk page on Wikipedia for a heated discussion of "Arakawa River" vs. "Ara River.")